


Secondly, There's a Lot More Paperwork To Do

by Daisiestdaisy (Doyle)



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Humor, M/M, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2018-04-27 04:31:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5033887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doyle/pseuds/Daisiestdaisy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gavin has a reputation to consider. Usually the men he dates understand the need for things like non-disclosure contracts. Usually.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Secondly, There's a Lot More Paperwork To Do

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday, thisguyfucks on Tumblr!
> 
> Title's from EL James' Fifty Shades of Grey, and has been going round in my head since I did a [photoset](http://daisiestdaisy.tumblr.com/post/122019598980/gavin-belson-50-shades-of-grey-quotes) of these two with lines from the book.

 

 

Gavin brought out the non-disclosure agreement at the end of the meal, while they were waiting for coffee. Or, since neither of them drank coffee, while they were waiting for a decaf green tea for him and another Mountain Dew for Nelson. “Before we go,” he paused long enough for the unspoken _to my place_ to be obvious, and for Nelson to grin, “I wanted to get your signature on these.”

“Sure, gimme.” Nelson held his hand out for the pen. “Thanks. Did I miss one? I thought I signed everything you left for me today.”

“No, you did. Good job on that,” he remembered to add. It was a little thing, but it seemed to light Nelson up with surprised pleasure every time – and, credit where it was due, he actually _was_ doing a pretty good job as stand-in CIO. Well, he was doing everything Gavin told him to, and it was hard to find fault with that. “This isn’t a work thing, actually. It’s some personal paperwork.”

“Ohhhh.” Nelson sat back in his chair.

Gavin didn’t like the length of that ‘oh’. He dealt with it, as with a lot of things he didn’t like, by pretending it hadn’t happened. “Just sign at the bottom of the second page, and initial where I’ve put the x’s.”

“Um.” Nelson flipped over to the second page, tapping the point of the Mont Blanc on the blank line. “Could I have a minute to read it?”

He’d never asked that, even when putting his name to Hooli contracts with nine- or ten-figure dollar values on the first page. “Of course,” Gavin said, trying not to sound surprised. “Take your time.”

Nelson wasn’t offended, was he? Nobody had ever been offended before. On the contrary, often they’d produced NDAs of their own. But then, most of the men he’d – Gavin mentally backed away from the word “dated” – most of the men he’d been on discreetly intimate extra-curricular terms with had been powerful business leaders his own age, with as much to lose by going public as he did. Or lawyers. He’d not-dated a good number of lawyers over the years. Belatedly, he wished he’d gotten one of them to look over a standard Hooli employment contract.

But if he’d learned one thing from that fucking arbitration, it was the importance of having all of your papers in order. It was only because he’d been thrown by that case, by his humiliating demotion in a company he’d founded, that he’d let this liaison with Nelson go on for weeks without any kind of legal safety net. Bad enough if he’d just been any random hookup – for a moment, Gavin entertained himself with the compelling image of Nelson as a patent attorney, or a paralegal, something that would require him to wear a suit to work – but considering that they worked together, and Nelson was technically his boss now, and that he selfishly insisted on staying best friends with someone who was undoubtedly plotting revenge against Gavin, maybe right this second...

Yeah. He was really going to need that signature before they went anywhere.

Nelson was squinting at the page, nodding slowly in that way he did when the board asked him anything that he needed Gavin to jump in and answer.

“Everything look okay? It should mostly be boilerplate legalese.”

“Boilerplate. Yep. Sure. So this is something you give to every guy you...” The waiter was back with their drinks order, and Nelson downed half the soda in one nervous motion. At least that prevented him from finishing that sentence.

“Yes, it’s something I have to ask every time,” Gavin said, when they were alone again. He stirred his tea, contemplating the steam drifting up from the cup. “Do I wish I didn’t have to? Of course. That would make my life so much simpler. But it’s just safer this way, for you as well as me.”

“No, yeah, I get that. And, total honesty, I think maybe I’ve kind of been waiting for this? It’s just, I really like things how they are right now.”

That was nice to know, both that he enjoyed their time together and that he’d been realistic enough to see this coming. Gavin didn’t do physical contact in public, even a half-hour’s drive from Palo Alto and in a restaurant no-one he knew would have been seen dead in, but he nudged his knee against Nelson’s under the table. “None of that has to change.”

“It feels like it would, though? Bringing in contracts...”

“Just one contract,” he said, his heart sinking.

He couldn’t explain how disappointed he felt. It didn’t make any sense. If Nelson wouldn’t sign, whether that was out of some stupid principle or because he actually _was_ planning to stab him in the back, then it was over, and all he had to think about was shutting this down without compromising their working relationship. That was probably all it was, he told himself. Worry about what this would mean for Hooli.

Nelson bit his lip and looked between the paper and Gavin. “I’ve never even been tied up,” he said, apropos of absolutely nothing.

Gavin said, “...excuse me?”

“Or, like, one time? But that was with Richard and we were ten and soooo not a sex thing. And it wasn’t fun. Nope. But,” he added, with optimism rising in his voice, “maybe it’s more fun if it _is_ a sex thing?”

“Nelson.” Gavin dropped his head between his hands.

“So, not a hard pass because I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it, but – slow down, maybe? Talk safewords or whatever first?”

“ _Nelson_.” He pressed his thumbs to the corners of his eyes until he saw calming little flares of light behind his eyelids. “It’s a mutual non-disclosure agreement. A confidentiality contract.”

“ _Oh_.”

“Not some BDSM lifestyle thing, which you’d apparently ‘kind of been waiting for’.”

“Only a little bit?” Nelson tried. “I haven’t known you that long. I mean, I only found out tonight that you watch _Castle_ and you’ve never tried anchovies, so there’s a ton I might not know about you yet.”

“It’s because of that fucking book, isn’t it?” As if there hadn’t already been enough unrealistic, unfair expectations heaped on members of the billionaire community without inexplicably popular softcore erotic fiction making things a thousand times worse. “Let me tell you something, that book got everything wrong. I don’t believe the author did any research at all. Nobody _I_ know has a personal bondage sex-dungeo... well, you can’t really count some 1x-er like Hanneman, his net worth’s barely in the billions.”

“Anyway! Mutual non-disclosure agreement, cool,” Nelson said, scrawling his name at the bottom of page two – finally. “So... the mutual part means you have to sign too?”

He hadn’t been planning on it, but it would have looked churlish, so he took the pen back and signed and initialled GB in the right places. “I don’t think you have to worry about me selling my story to the media, Nelson.”

“No, but it means you can’t tell Richard, right?”

“I was never going to.” Which was true, he told himself. He’d just enjoyed knowing that he could, and sometimes in selecting exactly which pictures he’d attach.

“Hey,” Nelson said, and although they were still in public, his hand settled on Gavin’s wrist for a second, his thumb moving across the string of beads there. “I’m sorry if somebody did that to you.”

Gavin shrugged. “My lawyers dealt with it. It’s fine. Thank you for signing.” He should have pulled his hand away, he knew. He didn’t; waited till Nelson drew back himself before gesturing to the waiter for the check.

Halfway back to his place, eyes fixed on the road and his voice very casual, he asked, “What did you mean, you’d be lying if you said you hadn’t thought about it?”

 


End file.
